


Just Under the Surface...

by AllHallowsEve



Series: Wincest Colored Glasses [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s01e08 Bugs, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Longing, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pre-Slash, Slow Burn, Wincest - Freeform, painful memories, sexual desire, snail's pace level slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 11:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14831789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllHallowsEve/pseuds/AllHallowsEve
Summary: A whole lot of insects come to town for revenge and the boys get caught in the crossfire.Episode 8 as seen through Wincest colored glasses.





	Just Under the Surface...

**Author's Note:**

> Buckle up, because there is an entire train car's worth of angst and baggage from the past between the boys in this one, so be forewarned.
> 
> As always this is unbeta'd so please feel free to contact me to let me know if you see any mistakes, glaring or otherwise.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

Sam lounged on the hood of the Impala leaning back against the windshield, reading a newspaper, trying to seem unfazed as he waited for Dean.  His brother was inside hustling some of the local bikers for money at pool. 

Sam had tried waiting inside, but couldn’t stomach how some of the larger guys were eyeing Dean, like if the others weren’t around they would eat him up.  Sometimes Dean could be completely obtuse as to what his model beautiful face, amazing build and tight ass, could do to even mostly straight men once he turned on the charm to nuclear fission level.

Luckily Dean was very good at hustling pool so he came back to the car, flush with cash, not too long after.  Sam had just enough time to have found a case for them.  He breathed a sigh of relief as they drove off into the night, away from the burly bikers and their lurid ideas, headed towards Oasis Plains, Oklahoma and a supposed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease related death that couldn’t possibly be, given the details of the case. 

They spent the next morning researching the area where the gas company worker had died.  The only strange thing Sam found down in the hole, where the dead man had drawn his last breath, was ten beetles.  Dean didn’t think that seemed strange at all, and expressed as much, but Sam adamantly insisted that there were no other signs of anything down there that could have done any damage to the man.

They decided to check out the neighborhood to see if there was a history of anything like this ever happening before.  Dean got excited when they drove by an open house barbeque.  Sam knew he just wanted the free food but Dean insisted it was purely for professional reasons they should attend.

They were met at the door by Larry Pike, who introduced himself as the developer of the neighborhood that was being built from the ground up.  He took one look at them and launched into a selling spiel.  The boys were both taken aback by his statement of, “Let me just say, we accept homeowners of any race, religion, color, or,” He paused, smiling at them earnestly, “sexual orientation.”

Sam blushed furiously, not being able to stop the smile that manifested across his face, without his control, dimples breaking out in both cheeks.

Dean’s forehead frowned, eyes swiping quickly to the side towards Sam before saying breathily, “We’re brothers.”

Both men’s hearts wouldn’t stop hammering, as they followed the developer into the house.

The problems continued once they met the Lynda Bloom, head of sales for the area, introducing herself with the same speech as before about accepting any ‘sexual orientation.’

Dean’s eyes crinkled and he huffed out a painful laugh, not knowing how to handle it.  His heart galloping in his chest, he swallowed hard, deciding to just let it go and play into it, as he said “I’m gonna go talk to Larry, okay _honey_?’ patting Sam on the butt, as he walked away.

Sam froze in shocked surprise, turning to watch Dean walk away.  He was left with Lynda, as she prattled on about the benefits of the new neighborhood, Sam barely heard any of it.  His mind was on how it had felt to hear Dean call him honey.  How he had patted him on the ass, like it was nothing, but it made Sam’s imagination spring into overdrive.  Of what it might be like if they were together, as a couple, introducing themselves as partners, not brothers, to strangers when they met.

Of course that wasn’t even a blip on radar of possible things for the future.  Dean would be repulsed if he knew what Sam dreamed about, fantasized about, let alone what would happen if John ever caught a whiff of it.  Sam would be lucky to survive with his life.

Dean finally found something interesting in the tour Larry was giving him, of his family’s own home, being shown at the barbeque.  A jar of live bugs was sitting on a side table, but Larry explained it away, saying his son loved insects, and was very inquisitive about them.

About that time, in the back yard, Sam was still listening to Lynda drone on about steam showers, when he noticed a tarantula making its way slowly towards her hand, where it rested on the table, next to her.  He looked up and spotted a teen laughing about it.

Sam stepped over to the spider, allowing it to make its way onto his outstretched hand, and walked pointedly over to the young man.  They had a short conversation in which Sam learned the boy’s name was Matt, and he was Larry’s son, who was seemingly disgruntled by that fact.  Sam could definitely relate to the kid’s feeling not up to snuff in his father’s opinion.  Sam tried to convey to the kid that it gets better, but before he could make much progress, the father in question came over, angrily calling out “Matthew,” apologizing to Sam for the boy, before hurriedly sweeping him and his pet away in frustrated embarrassment.

Sam huffed in disgust, at how well he recognized what the kid was going through, as he watched the man berate his son just out of the main thoroughfare, where the festivities were occurring.

Dean walked over and Sam asked, “Remind you of somebody?”

Dean looked over to the arguing pair, and looked back at Sam, his blank expression making clear he had no idea what Sam meant.

“Dad?” Sam asked with a tone that showed how obvious he thought it was.

Dean’s eyes widened and then his brow furrowed in bewilderment, before looking back at Sam saying “Dad never treated us like that.”

Sam scoffed, answering bitterly, “Well, Dad never treated you like that.  You were perfect.  He was all over my case.”

Dean shook his head, confusion writ large across his expressive face.

Sam huffed in disbelief, “You don’t remember?”

When it became clear that he and Dean were never going to see eye to eye about how they were raised, and Dean being blind to the clear impropriety Sam felt their upbringing was littered with, Sam gave up.

“Whatever.” Was his last word on the subject, in clear exasperation with his brother’s starry eyed view of their lives and impossible childhood.

He turned the conversation back to the case, as a survival mechanism to get through this emotional miasma he was feeling right now.

Dean had found out this recent death on the property wasn’t the first.  A year ago someone else had died here with a severe allergic reaction to bee stings, yet another bug connection to this case.  They left the barbeque with more questions than answers though.

Dean wasn’t blind to Sam’s hurt feelings, over the conversation about their dad, and how John had been towards Sam.  He didn’t want to disrespect his dad by admitting any wrong doing on his part, but it had been hard to watch how hard John was on Sam all his life.  His brother had always wanted a different life, a normal life.  Dean had resented him for it.  Feeling like Sam should have loved their family as much as Dean did. 

But he admitted, if only to himself, that John had been too hard on Sam.  John never seemed to see all the ways Sam was special, different yes, but incredibly amazing in his own way.  He was the smartest person Dean had ever known, and many of his ideas had been the key to solving hard cases, putting pieces together that Dean and John would have never seen on their own, even when he had been too young to go out on the actual hunts himself.

Sam and John had been like oil and water for years now, and Dean just didn’t have the strength to fight with Sam about it.  So he had tried not to add in to what Sam was saying earlier.  He regretted it now, feeling like he had betrayed Sam’s trust in him, by not admitting the truth of it.

He did the only thing he could think of that didn’t involve a chick flick moment, he let Sam drive as they left to find a place to crash for the evening.

Sam had no idea where they were going as Dean directed him to pull into one of the completed yet empty homes in the neighborhood development, but was chagrined to find out that Dean planned for them to squat in the empty house that night.  He had to admit though that Dean was adorable when he smiled like a little kid and explained excitedly that he wanted to try the steam shower.

The next morning Dean was spending an inordinately long time in that shower.  It was driving Sam to distraction.  His imagination was going wild thinking of Dean being inundated by multiple streams of water, his skin glistening as the drops slid down his chest and back. 

Sam might have found a way to relieve the pressure that was building with that fantasy, and take advantage of Dean being out of the room, but he heard a police call that came in on their scanner and it burst the bubble of his growing interest.  The case smashing through the warm glow he was beginning to enjoy put him in a decidedly bad mood, which was exacerbated by the discomfort from the extreme tightness in the front of his jeans.  It came out in the angry tenor with which he banged on the door to the bathroom, where he could still hear the shower going, hard and fast, against Dean’s skin.

He yelled at Dean to hurry up, explaining that someone had been found dead, three blocks from them.  Sam’s patience and libido were both put to the test when Dean opened the door, steam billowing out around his wet body, a huge smile on his handsome face, wearing nothing but a towel around his damp hips and one adorably wrapped around his head like a turban.

Sam wanted nothing more than to push him back into the shower and climb in after him, pressing him up against the wall, finally kissing his lips, the way he dreamed of since he was twelve years old.  He wanted to rip both towels off and sink to his knees, taking Dean in, under the steaming shower.  Sam’s dick gave a twitch and he snapped out of his revelry in a panic. 

He grumbled “Come on,” at his oblivious brother and turned tail, all but running from the door in the opposite direction.

They found out the person killed was Lynda, the realtor from the day before.  After they snuck into her house to see what had happened, they found dead spiders where she had died.  They decided it was time to talk to Matt, since he seemed a logical place to start if the insects were being controlled and forced to attack.

They found him out in the woods, right off of the neighborhood, looking at a large insect.  They confronted him about what was going on, and he seemed to know a lot more than anyone else about what was happening.  He told them they needed to see something so they followed him deeper into the woods.

As they walked Sam asked the kid why he hadn’t let anyone know about the problem if he realized that there was something wrong.  Matt answered glumly that he had tried but “Larry doesn’t listen to me because he is too disappointed in his freak son.”

His answer punched Sam right in the gut.  He had felt that way for years about his own father.

When Sam found out that Matt was sixteen, he encouraged him “Well don’t sweat it, in two years you can go off to college, get out of that house and away from your dad.”

Sam’s words were like a million pounds of weight crashing against Dean as he followed along behind the two.  His heart cried out that it wasn’t just John, Sam had left behind, it was him, too.

He lashed out at Sam as they walked, asking “What kind of advice is that?”  He continued bitterly, “Kid should stick with his family.”

Sam stopped walking and turned, staring at Dean with his pissiest expression. Dean glared back at him silently, hurt and pain evident in his frowning brow and turned down lips.

Sam didn’t recognize the clues for what they truly meant, misreading Dean’s reaction as just another way that he took John’s side, instead of supporting Sam’s decision.

He didn’t know what more Dean wanted from him.  He was here, not at Stanford.  He had given up everything to be here.  He turned back and followed Matt, swallowing his frustration to focus on the case.

Their small group ended up in a clearing where Matt explained that bugs, of all kinds, had been gathering.  He had no idea what their purpose in doing so was, nor what precipitated it.  Dean noticed a dark grouping just on the other side of the open space and they went to check it out.  He dug around in the hole there and found a long dead skull.  There were more where that came from, along with multiple skeletons.

The boys took some of the skulls and bones to the local university to meet up with someone in the Anthropology department.

As they were walking across campus to find the building they were supposed to go to for their meeting, Dean asked Sam why he had told Matt what he did about leaving home.  They got into a fight and both were hurting and angry by the end of it. 

Sam believed that even if they found their dad, there was no guarantee he would even want to see Sam.  Dean tried to explain to Sam that his dad was never disappointed in him, that he had been petrified of what would happen to Sam if he didn’t make sure he was prepared, in every way, for whatever he might come up against.  That was why John had pushed Sam so hard.  Why he had insisted Sam sacrifice things, like soccer and drama, for target practice and bow hunting. 

Dean was desperate to make Sam give his dad a break.  Dean knew John could be a dick, especially to Sam, but if Dean didn’t find a way to get Sam to forgive their dad, then if he and John got into it again, it would all but guarantee Sam would leave once more.  Abandon Dean the way he had before.  It had nearly killed Dean the first time, but he wasn’t sure he would survive if it happened again.

He told Sam that John had always tried to look out for Sam. Even confessing that John used to go check up on him at Stanford just to make sure he was okay.  It floored Sam.  Catching him completely off guard, as did Dean confronting him about the awful things Sam had said to their father, the night he had left for Stanford, when John ending up basically throwing him out.

After saying his peace, not knowing if any of it had gotten through his little brother’s hard head, Dean was silent the rest of the way into the building, stewing on fear and uncertainty of what would come when they finally figured out a way to find their dad. 

The Anthropology professor examined the bones, saying they seemed to be about 170 years old, but having few answers beyond that.  He did direct them to the nearest Native American tribe about 60 miles away, saying if anyone might have answers about the area during that time period, it would probably be someone there.

After asking around once they got to the tribal land, they met up with Joe Whitetree, a tribe elder, who told them that the land they were asking about had originally been occupied by his ancestors.  That what happened 170 years ago was a six day long massacre of his people, by the Cavalry, beginning on the Spring Equinox.  He explained that on the final day as the chief of the tribe lay dying, he called upon Nature to avenge his people.  Asking it to ensure that every year the white man would pay, and would never again be able to taint their land.

The boys hauled ass back to the development as quickly as possible when they realized that the coming night would be the sixth since the first person this year had died.  If Joe Whitetree was correct, they had to find a way to get the Pike family out of their house and off that land as soon as possible, otherwise, they would all be dead by morning.

They ran into a problem when Larry wouldn’t believe them, or Matt, who desperately tried to convince his father that the boys were just trying to help. Larry refused to listen until it was too late.  A swarm of insects attacked the house, breaking through each barrier Sam and Dean tried to protect the family with.  They all ended up in the attic but it was no good.  They fought and fought, at last resorting to shielding the family with their own bodies, in a huddle.  They would have all ended up dying if sunrise hadn’t broken through the clouds and called the insects away.

The boys came back, later that day, to check in on the family, only to find a moving truck already mostly packed.  Larry and Matt seemed to have come to some mutual understanding.  Some kind of truce had been formed, when Larry realized that his son had known what was going on, had been right, and he hadn’t bothered to listen to him.  They had almost died from it, and he never wanted to risk alienating his son that way again.

Sam watched the father and son interact, their body language expressed the fact that they were more open with each other, willing to forgive what each of them had put the other through. 

Sam stood quietly for a few moments, leaning against the Impala next to Dean, before whispering, “I wanna find dad.”

Dean answered back just as earnestly, “Yeah, me too.”

Sam swallowed hard, fighting back exhausted tears, his throat thick with emotion, making it hard to speak.  “Yeah, but I just, I wanna apologize to him.”

His voice was a hoarse whisper as he spoke, making Dean turn to watch his little brother, seeing Sam’s face flushed in sorrow.  Sam’s lip quivered causing Dean’s heart to constrict as he asked Sam, “What for?” in concern.

“All the things I said to him.”  Sam’s eyes watered and he licked his lips before speaking again. “He was just doing the best he could.”

Dean nodded, turning away from Sam, to stare forward, unable to take in all Sam’s vulnerability and emotion, without immediately pulling him into his arms.  He fought himself, forcing his body to continue to stay exactly where it was, evoking nothing but ease in the relaxed pose he was desperately trying to maintain.  Every cell in his body screamed at him to take Sam in his arms, rock him, promise him it would be okay, that he would never let his dad hurt him again, and he would take care of him, the way he had always promised.

Instead, Dean stood, and just nodded, unable to meet Sam’s eyes in the face of his raw confession.  He drew in a deep breath, steadying himself before saying as calmly as he could, “Don’t worry, we’ll find him, and you’ll apologize, and then within five minutes you guys will be at each other’s throats.”

It earned him the laugh he was hoping for from Sam.  Relief plan in his brother’s voice, as he agreed and couldn’t stop smiling at Dean, lifting his heart, and making him feel like he was flying.

They agreed to hit the road and drove off leaving the weighty conversation behind, even if they both continued to feel it for miles.

**Author's Note:**

> So there is a tiny bit more sexual build up going on, which makes me happy. This episode lent itself well for that as well as for beaucoup amounts of angst regarding each other and John.
> 
> I am having a great time doing this. I was afraid I would start getting worn out, but so far so good. No guarantee I will be able to maintain this level of enthusiasm, but so far so good.
> 
> All your kudos and comments are feeding my soul and making the journey so much easier. I am thrilled you are all here on this ride with me!


End file.
